[2] KC played themselves. Just reading much of the commentary about this makes me appreciate the Yanks' approach a little more, even though they are being annoyingly tight-lipped about it.

"So, Dayton Moore, after your bats fail you all year, you figure that trading away your blue chips for a new staff comprised of cast-offs and whatever gives you the gumption to 'go for it'?" Of course the standard answer is that you never know what you will actually get with prospects, while you have proven talent with what you're getting. The real answer is that you are hoping beyond hope the talent you gave up turns out to be mediocre at best or you're the newest "expert analyst" at E@$%.

What bothers me is that though we generally tend to be in favor of Cashman's judgment, we likely don't trust the rest of the organization in making sensible long-term decisions at this point; past the 2009 season where patience and the right moves paid off, there's little chance the Yanks can continue to operate the way they have in picking off other teams' best players when they are eligible for free agency because the good teams are hardly letting their good young players reach the market anymore. Meanwhile, we still let go of our best prospects without giving them an honest chance to develop in the big leagues (and yet, Nune5 is still here while Jackson, Kennedy and Montero and others are not).

Obviously if the whole exercise in reducing payroll is actually more about following the example of Tampa Bay model, they need to address far many more issues than payroll before that begins to work.